The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

He finds a vantage point between two boulders. With interest he watches the duel: First Son of the First Litter, calm, canny, and strong, waits as Seventh Son of the Second Litter circles in aggressively. Too aggressively. He watches dispassionately as the two brothers meet, clash, rip, and leap back. Seventh Son is quick and ruthless. First Son has greater strength, but he wastes it not, for the duel is still young. He lets Seventh Son feint and circle, lunge, parry, and retreat, and hoards his own strength meanwhile.

Another lunge, another blow. Blood flows, eases. First Son wears a gash in his left shoulder. Seventh Son limps. They begin again.

In the end it is simply a matter of time. Seventh Son is fierce, but fierceness does not count for everything. First Son did not escape from the ruin of Gent with a large portion of his warband intact by being foolish. Nor is he foolish here.

In the end, it is Seventh Son who lies bloody and torn upon the earth. Fifth Son does not wait for First Son to cut the braid that will mark his victory, but retreats from his hiding place and cuts through trees to the path that leads up to the fjall, to the nest of the WiseMothers. He passes the newest WiseMother, still on her slow journey to the flall, but he does not stop to speak to her. He must have time if he is to defeat First Son.

At this elevation all vegetation has been scoured away by the unceasing wind and the unforgiving chill, all but moss, moss everywhere except on those slopes where there is a recent fall of scree. Snowmelt streams flow downslope, as clear as air and bitterly cold. Everywhere rock lies, tumbled in the streambeds, smothered in moss, blanketing the slopes; rock is the mantle that shrouds the deep earth and the hidden fire.

Here an arm of the fjord has sliced into the high fjall, and a stream spills over a cliff that plunges straight down like a knife cut. The falling water booms down to the tongue of the fjord. The cliff he stands on is mirrored in the still water far below. For a moment, he sees his own shape, indistinct and tiny, a transitory blot upon the ancient land, and then the wind moving over the water obliterates him—as will his own mortality, in time. But not this day.

A dog howls in the distance. A hawk soars above the opposite cliff face, joined by a second hawk, then a third.

Wind stirs on his shoulders, and he turns away from the edge and makes his way to the ring of WiseMothers. He watches the ground with care, because here on the fjall the silvery nets of the ice wyrms change from season to season as their paths change, snaking lines of glimmering sand, each grain a crystal shard of venom: Their trail.

It is a peculiarly still day, wearing away to what passes for night at this season. Here on the fjall the wind usually cuts unceasingly, sawing and grinding away at the rock. Today it rests quiescent, stirring only occasionally as if it, too, awaits the decision soon to be reached on the nesting ground of the WiseMothers.

The land dips to make a hollow, where the Rikin WiseMothers congregate and whisper. Their thoughts reverberate into the heavens, and touch OldMan, the moon, the priest who in ancient days was banished to the fjall of the heavens as punishment for his transgressions. That is why the moon alone among all the heavenly creatures fades and dies, and is born again out of darkness. Such is the fate of all sons of the RockChildren.

The WiseMothers stand hunched in a rough circle, huge bodies ossifying, too heavy now to move. Each one stands with her toes just grazing on the expanse of silver sand. The sand lies smooth; no trace of the ever-present wind touches it; no debris lies scattered from recent storms; no scallops ripple its surface, for the nest of the WiseMothers is impervious to wind and guarded by the ice-wyrms.

Only the WiseMothers know what they are incubating here.

For a long while he watches the glimmering hollow. Nothing stirs. Nothing.

But that is illusion.

Even the small creatures that haunt the fjall know to avoid the nesting grounds.

He takes a rock from the pouch and tosses it. Where it hits the sand with a thunk, a shudder ripples out from it actually visible in the surface just as a tossed stone ripples still water. As the vibrations stir the sand away on the other side, where the rock fell, he slides one foot onto the hard surface and follows with the second.

The stone tilts, rocks. A gleaming claw, translucent like ice, surfaces to hook the stone. That fast, stone and claw vanish. He stops dead still. The sand where the stone hit eddies, smooths over, and lies still again.

He waits.

He dares not move.

He does not fear the claws of the ice-wyrms. They are fragile creatures, sightless, as thin as rope, at home only when they burrow deep in their nests of crystallized venom. Even starlight burns them.

But there is no creature the RockChildren fear as much as the ice-wyrms. No death compares to the wretched fate that awaits one who is stung. The venom of the ice-wyrms nourishes the WiseMothers, who nurse the roots of the earth. They alone are strong enough to take succor from it.

To all other creatures, it brings that which is worse than death. In this way Bloodheart protected himself, with a dead nestbrother animated by magic and fueled with venom. That is the mark of an enchanter: Even after death his hand can strike down the one who killed him.

He reaches into the pouch, draws out another stone, and tosses it. One stone at a time, he slides out across the nesting ground toward a small hummock that emerges from the silver sands in the center. As hard as iron, the surface of the hummock is polished to a pearlescent gleam.

It takes him half the short summer’s night to get there, but when he reaches the hummock and takes that last step onto its slick surface, he can shake out his tense limbs. The rounded dome warms his feet, and it smells faintly of sulfur. He is safe.

Safe, that is, until he has to cross back.

He has made this journey before. Only here, in the center of the nesting ground, can mortal ears hear the whispering of the WiseMothers. No creature enslaved to the earth lives long enough to hear even one of their thoughts in its entirety. But the youngest of the WiseMothers can still speak, if only one has the patience to listen. He has listened to them before. He has brashly asked their advice.

Yet it is not their advice he seeks this day.

Night fades to morning. He waits. First Son does not come.

He waits, and listens.

“They. Will. Pass. The. Bridge. And. The. Cataract.”